Hope for the new year: Shawn Levi, a local amputee, says he wants ‘A new life. A new start. A new outlook.’

A workplace injury two and a half years ago resulted in a below-the-knee amputation of Shawn Levi’s left leg. he is now looking for work. Toledo Free Press photos and cover photo by Joseph Herr

A workplace injury two and a half years ago resulted in a below-the-knee amputation of his left leg Oct. 30.

Just a few weeks ago, he was still in the nursing home, Heartland of Oregon, with a tiny Christmas tree sitting on his nightstand.

He struggled getting dressed. He could barely use the bathroom. He feared using the steps.

But 2014 is going to be better.

It has to be.

The new year brings his 30th birthday on Jan. 15. While most people don’t look forward to the big 3-0, he is craving the milestone. He wants to leave behind the past 29 years.

“A new life. A new start. A new outlook.”

That is what he hopes for himself.

“I want to be born again. I want to have a new outlook on life and not be so negative,” he said.

For Shawn this will be hard. He grew up in foster care, was eventually adopted and then left home after high school. He has two children he hasn’t been able to see, but hopes to change that in the new year if he gets to a better place in his life.

He also wants a job.

Shawn has had jobs here and there, including Taco Bell, but he has never had a career. He is interested in police work, but a suicide attempt will most likely keep him from that occupation. He would possibly like to be trained to work with computers.

He even lived at the Cherry Street Mission until a friend, Mike Terry, invited him to stay at his house.

“I still haven’t really swallowed this. I still haven’t mourned the loss of half of my leg. A lot of people tell me it is like losing a family member.”

The accident

Shawn said he was working as a temp at Precision Steel Services on June 14, 2011, when he lifted a steel beam.

“I lifted it over my head not knowing it was cut. As soon as I got it over my head, which was 6 to 7 feet in the air, a piece snapped off and the remainder hit my knee and smashed my foot.”

Shawn went to the ER, but was sent home thinking his foot was bruised and his big toe was broken. A few days later, his foot started to swell even worse and he developed cellulitis from the tip of his toes all the way up his leg. He was put on antibiotics, but had an allergic reaction.

Meanwhile, he felt his foot “explode,” he said, and it started to arch. Out of necessity, he started to walk on the outside of his left foot. “I couldn’t feel it,” he said.

He would do this for more than two years, gaining 100 pounds from inactivity.

Sometimes he wishes he still had his bad leg because then he could at least get around better. But he knows the amputation was the right choice. He has already lost 50 pounds since the surgery.

“I just wish it didn’t take so long. I don’t know why it has been two and a half years,” he said.

While Shawn doesn’t want to discuss any possible legal action, he is receiving workers’ compensation and is thankful that everything has been covered. He is also glad he found Dr. Gregory Georgiadis.

“He is an amazing doctor. I finally found a doctor who really cared about the situation and handled it. I was reading a prosthesis book, and he said, ‘This could be what you have.’ I was like, ‘OK.’”

Family matters

Obviously, no one wants to lose a limb, but Shawn said at least his amputation was below the knee, which will make using a prosthetic limb a little easier. He should be fit for one when his post-surgery infection clears up.

“There are days when I am still here and no one is here and you wish you had people coming up here because it is so boring,” he said, while at the nursing home.

In December, he called his biological mother in Tennessee. From afar, she feels for him, although she has no plans to visit.

“It really does hurt to see a son hurt so badly,” Carol Cummings said. “How can you be positive when things are so negative?”

He has had some visitors. His adopted family, from whom he had been estranged for six years, is among them.

“When I was in the hospital after the amputation, my adopted brother, Jeremy Dobie, came walking in the door. I was like, ‘Hey bro, what is going on?’

“We are all talking again and I am pretty happy about that.”

Dobie said it was shocking to find out his brother was going to lose his leg and it put everything into perspective.

“I am definitely glad that I have gotten the chance to make things a little bit better between us,” Dobie said. “He seems to be pretty positive about the whole situation.”

Shawn has also experienced an outpouring of love from a local family, his main support system.

Shawn and Mike worked together at McDonald’s as teenagers, although they were not good friends then. Mike’s mom, Barb Farley, remembers bringing them pizza when they got tired of eating McDonald’s.

“One day Mike said, ‘Remember that guy you took pizza to at McDonald’s? He is in trouble. He is living at the Cherry Street Mission,’” Barb said. “He had an accident and lost everything he had: his rental, his car and everything in storage.

“I said, ‘we have to get him out of there,’ and my son went to get him, and Shawn has never left.”

Since then, Shawn has lived with Mike at his rental house, along with two other roommates. They are willing to revamp the house to include an extra rail or set up accommodations in the bathroom. But since the first floor doesn’t have a bathroom or bedroom, Mike said they want to move in January or February to find something that works better for Shawn.

“We have been in close quarters for a long time and everyone has moments where we don’t get along, but I look at him like a brother and that is what brothers do sometimes,” Mike said.

Like brothers, he even managed to bring some levity to the situation just a few days after surgery. Both are Buckeyes fans, so Mike drew an “O” on the bottom of Shawn’s new red cast and added a real pair of sunglasses.

“My mom has a big heart — sometimes too big — and I inherit that from her,” Mike said.

He remembers running into Shawn around town as adults, and then one day Shawn called him about throwing a birthday party at his house because he was living at the shelter. Mike agreed. That weekend, he told him, “Dude, you don’t have to go back there.”

Cherry Street Mission president and CEO Dan Rogers said it is rare for people to “rescue” clients from the shelter. Actually, it is usually in their best interest to stay and get the help they need, whether that is with a job or substance abuse.

The best way to support a friend or family member at the Cherry Street Mission is to send them a care package, eat dinner with them or participate in a shelter event. But sometimes friends and family find out someone is living at the shelter and that person is ready to leave and that is a great situation, he said.

“He has just had a horrible life,” Barb said. “It makes me cry. I couldn’t imagine having him go through everything he had to go through without a mom standing by. I told him to program me in his phone as ‘Mom 2.’”

Mike is happy to share his mother.

“A lot of his family isn’t around here and hasn’t been involved as much as I think they should be.”

Next steps

Shawn’s amputation is just the beginning of a series of surgeries he needs. Because he walked sideways on his foot, the remaining part of his leg is twisted. He also has two bulging discs in his back.

Soon he will be fitted for his prosthetic leg and taught how to use it. The moment he feels comfortable using his new leg, he knows exactly what he wants to do.

“Run, mow the lawn, take out the garbage without worrying about falling down,” he said with a huge smile on his face.

His list also includes skiing, being on a boat and “just being around people socially and not having people stare at me every time I go in a store,” he said.

The stares have been hard.

“When people are out of the norm, walk differently or have a drooping eye, it is amazing to see how people look at them,” Shawn said. “I ignore the situation, but it still upsets me. I keep my mouth shut and hop on.”

Barb has tried to reassure him.

“When people look at you, they see your eyes. They see everything through your eyes; it has nothing to do with your limbs,” she told him.

Roberta Cone, a psychologist and advisory committee member of the national Amputee Coalition, said people stare because, “Yes, we are different.”

She lost her arm in an automobile accident more than a decade ago.

“I have had an extraordinary life, but there are challenges and you are different. There is a period of relearning things.”

The psychologist said it helps to know that “you are so much more than your appearance.”

She said limb loss is equated to losing a loved one and no one should discount that. The best advice she can give is: “Seek the help of support groups and find meaning in your loss.”

When Shawn is down and doesn’t think he will be able to work again, Barb is the one who supports him. She thinks he should volunteer first to see what might interest him.

“I want to start a charity to help injured workers out,” Shawn said. “It is a long road if you don’t have anyone. It is very depressing. I don’t know how I pulled through what I went through.”

But he has.

“It is amazing. I have had a rough road my entire life, but somewhere I still find the spirit to keep pushing and keep going.”

Judgment calls

Parents often say there is no manual for raising children, but there certainly should be a pool of common-sense standards we can agree on. A few incidents I witnessed during recent holiday activities have made me question even that low expectation.

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I do not mind taking my daily exercise walk in the cold, but the slightest sign of ice will chase me inside. While walking laps at Franklin Park Mall on Dec. 5, as I rounded the corner of the Macy’s entrance where the Santa Claus village is set up, I saw a woman walking with a little boy probably just under 4 years old. Santa called out, “Merry Christmas!” to him and the boy tugged the woman’s hand, did an antsy little dance/shuffle and said, “Mommy, Santa says hi!”

The woman tugged him away brusquely and said, for all to hear, “You ain’t seein’ no Santa. Santa ain’t even real.”

I could not see the boy’s face but his entire body fell still and shrunk into itself. The woman did not slow down and needed to pull the boy in her wake. He turned to look at Santa over his shoulder, his face impassive, his eyes confused and searching.

A number of us witnessed the moment but none of us said or did anything, a temporary prudence indicative of a permanent cowardice.

I posted the story to Facebook, which I am obligated to do under federal law, and followed the resulting teapot tempest for a few days. Most posters understood my shock and dismay at the ugliness of the scene, but more than a few sought to rationalize or justify the woman’s behavior. Their main arguments were that maybe the woman either doesn’t observe Christmas, — or more specifically doesn’t follow the holiday’s more commercial traditions — or is too poor to indulge her children in Christmas and therefore was just keeping it real, as the kids say.

I admit to instantly judging and convicting the woman of being a terrible parent and miserable human being. It does not matter to me what her qualifiers for being so brusque were. Let’s say she was horribly traumatized by Santa as a child, has lost several family members to a Santa Claus-themed serial killer and is so destitute that the mere thought of Santa and the presents she can’t afford for her children inspire heartbreaking desperation and irrational emotions. None of that is an excuse for publicly berating a child, attempting to yank his arm out of its socket and attacking the concept of Santa Claus in front of several other families and kids.

It goes beyond rude into abusive on a number of levels, and there is no explanation she could offer that would dissuade me from convicting her of being a bad parent. If she acts that way in public, who knows how she parents in private?

Two days later, we took our kids to see the Lights Before Christmas at the Toledo Zoo. It was in the mid-20s, so we layered the kids’ clothes and made sure they had their warmest hats, gloves and coats. That’s not superhuman parenting; that’s common sense. So I was amazed at how many people were marching around in the cold like those idiots who jump into freezing lakes in January.

If you are an adult and choose to walk around in freezing weather with your head, ears, hands and whatevers exposed to the bitter cold — well, OK, take your chances. But we saw scores of people walking around with their kids clearly not dressed properly for the weather. I am not suggesting that every mom and dad drop by the Coach store on their way to pick up their daily fresh Beluga caviar to buy mink-lined hats and gloves, but how about slipping into Big Lots or Kmart to get the basics? The Salvation Army and Goodwill stores are stocked with winter clothes. Some of the kids we saw at the lights exhibit had nothing on their heads or hands; I know we’re not living in Anchorage, but — spoiler alert — it gets freakin’ cold in Northwest Ohio. Let’s prep our children for the cold temperatures, OK?

On Dec. 8, a guest invited us to bring our two boys to the Huntington Center for the latest incarnation of Disney on Ice. Being a Disney enterprise, there were hundreds of plastic lighty-spinny things for sale, in the shape of Ariel, Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan and their pals. I am not a retail expert, so I cannot say if $15 baseball caps, $20 pressboard framed photos and $22 programs are overpriced, but it was made clear to our 7- and 5-year-old boys that with Christmas just a few weeks away, they weren’t going to be given money to buy anything from the souvenir booths. They did want to look, and we let them; while a few things caught their eyes, as they are designed to do, they walked away with a few more ideas for their Santa lists but more excited about getting to our seats.

Not so much for a little princess who wanted a Barbie-size Tinkerbell doll that went for $26. She was probably 5 or 6 and was stamping her feet, pinwheeling her arms and demanding her mom and dad buy the doll. Perhaps the child had developmental or mental challenges not apparent to a layman like me, but she seemed fairly articulate, just in the throes of a hissy fit. You can tear up my Father of the Year nomination, but if one of our boys had acted that way, not only would they have left the merch booth empty-handed, there is a strong possibility we would have left the arena and they would have missed the show as a consequence of their behavior. But the little princess’ mom and dad not only bought the Tinkerbell doll, they bought a matching Ariel doll and presented them to her with the broken reluctance of a caveman couple proffering a goat to an angry moon god. The princess, temporarily mollified, hugged her boxed treasures and started announcing her intention to get cotton candy.

Casting judgment with little information can be dangerous, but God help that little girl’s future if her parents fail to get a handle on her tantrum-driven behavior.

There is no absolute right way to raise kids, but there are plenty of wrong ways, in my judgment.

Michael S. Miller is editor in chief of Toledo Free Press and Toledo Free Press Star and news director for 1370 WSPD. Email him at mmiller@

toledofreepress.com.

Postscript: The entire weekend wasn’t full of bad examples. At the Dec. 7 Toy-A-Thon at Franklin Park Mall, the radio personalities from 92.5 KISS FM and 101.5 The River broadcast for eight hours to collect toys for needy kids. We had our boys pick some new, unwrapped toys to donate, and explained to them how blessed they are. It was gratifying to see scores of families bringing their kids to the event to teach them the importance of recognizing their blessings and in engaging in community philanthropy. As Sid Kelly from “The Morning Rush” writes in this week’s TFP Star, “I am proud of you Toledo. Every year you go out of your way and give to others who don’t have anything. I see you stand in line with your kids, fight the crowds and drop off a gift. You make sure your kids see you do that, and for that I am grateful.”

Barhite: Military girlfriend has new appreciation for July 4th

Laura Simmons, operations manager at the Lucas County Dog Warden’s Office, worked a half day on the Fourth of July.

She also went to the beach and the park because she promised her 31-year-old boyfriend, Luke Wark of Sandusky, that she would do something fun.

But she was still preoccupied.

The holiday used to be, “Oh, whatever, Fourth of July, yay,” she said, but since Wark is serving in Afghanistan, it is much more serious.

“It means a whole lot more. And Memorial Day took on a whole new meaning, too,” she said. Wark signed the papers with the National Guard right before they began hanging out in January 2010.

“I didn’t think he was going to go overseas. I said, ‘That is so cool, that is so exciting,’ ” Simmons said. “We didn’t know where our relationship was going to go.”

Spc. Wark volunteered for Afghanistan after being asked if he wanted to go. He might have been forced to go eventually, but this time around he wanted to go, she said.

“He is the left-door gunner in the helicopter. He never tells me all the details. I am not sure if he can or if he just doesn’t want to scare me.”

Text messaging and Skyping help with the distance and the constant worrying. She usually hears from him at least once per day, which eases her mind. On the Fourth of July, she posted on his Facebook, “So proud of you mister!” He replied, “Thanks hun, proud of you too!”

“We are able to talk every day right now,” Simmons said. “When he first left, we didn’t know if we could even talk once per week. Knowing how he is doing is a huge relief.”

One time she received a text from him that said there had been a car bomb at his base, but he was OK and to tell his family.

But then she didn’t hear from him again for 48 hours.

“I was in tears all day,” she said.

One thing Simmons never expected was to receive so much support as a military girlfriend. People thank her for both of their sacrifices. Some of his friends even took her out for her 27th birthday because he couldn’t.”

“People realize that our guys are over there, and there are families here who are making sacrifices, too,” she said.

The couple’s latest sacrifice is no summer visit.

“He will be back before Thanksgiving, but we don’t know for sure. He was supposed to come home for a two-week leave during the summer, and we had some fun things planned. It was kind of a bummer that it was canceled.”

Simmons said it helps when other people take the Fourth of July as seriously as she does now.

“It isn’t just the picnics and the fireworks. There is a whole other side, and people need to remember that.”

Midwest weather could hamper holiday travel

Holiday travelers in the Midwest braced for snow and ice from a storm Dec. 24 that was expected to deliver a rare white Christmas to Nashville and possibly Atlanta before rolling into the Northeast.

A day after the most densely populated parts of the county got a break from the weather, several inches of snow were expected across parts of the heartland. Up to 8 inches could fall in Iowa and 6 inches in Illinois and Minnesota, with forecasters warning drivers about snow-covered roads and limited visibility.

The storm was expected to crawl south into Tennessee on Saturday, then possibly move north on Dec. 26. Winter weather advisories were in effect from North Dakota into Kentucky.

“People that are going to Grandma’s house,” warned Bobby Boyd, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Nashville, “need to get going.”

In Georgia, the National Weather Service said 1 to 3 inches of snow could fall across metro Atlanta on Dec. 25. Most of north Georgia, including the Atlanta area, are under a Winter Weather Advisory for snow until at least 1 p.m. Dec. 26, according to the National Weather Service. If the forecast holds, it would be the first time since 1993 that snow fell on Christmas in Atlanta, the weather service said. The last time there was measurable snowfall on Christmas Day was in 1882, when one-third of an inch of snow blanketed the city.

Fair weather helped make the holiday sojourn a not-so-painful experience in much of the country Dec. 23, even with more people on the move than last year.

Eric and Tatiana Chodkowski, of Boston, were driving with their kids, ages 2 and 4, to see relatives in New York. They said forecasts for snow on Dec. 26 made them wonder whether they’d make it back then, as planned. They deemed the roads congested but manageable Dec. 23, and most people found the nation’s airports to be the same way.

Planes took off into windy but accommodating skies at New York’s LaGuardia Airport as Steve Kent prepared to fly to Denver for a family ski trip, scoffing at the puny lines.

“I don’t find it that difficult,” he said. “I think Thanksgiving is harder.”

At airports, the long security lines feared over Thanksgiving, when practically everyone is on the move the same day, never materialized, and aren’t expected to now. The spread-out nature of the year-end holidays means things won’t be quite so cramped.

Travelers may notice that airport screeners are taking a closer look at empty insulated beverage containers like thermoses because air carriers have been alerted about a potential terror tactic involving them, an administration official said.

The official, who spoke Dec. 23 on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters, stressed that there is no intelligence about an active terror plot. The Homeland Security Department regularly alerts law enforcement about evolving terror tactics.

The Air Transport Association expects 44.3 million people on U.S. flights between Dec. 16 and Jan. 5 — up 3 percent over the same period a year ago but still below pre-recession travel volume. The average ticket price is $421, up by 5 percent.

The Vino Volo Wine Room at Detroit Metropolitan Airport is benefiting from more travelers, manager Mark Del Duco said Thursday.

“The Christmas mood is more there this year than last,” he said, estimating that sales are up 10 percent this season compared with last year as financially confident travelers spend more freely.

Mike Lukosavich, of Harrison Township, Mich., was surprised the first leg of his trip was moving so smoothly when he stopped at rest area on the Ohio Turnpike in Elmore, Ohio, near Toledo.

He, his wife and their 8-month-old daughter were heading to see family in Parkersburg, W.Va. His only headache came when he saw the gas price of about $3 a gallon.

“It’s something you have to do to see the family,” said Lukosavich, 33.

The AAA has expected overall travel to rise about 3 percent this year, with more than 92 million people planning to go more than 50 miles sometime between now and Jan. 2. More than 90 percent said they would be driving.

Maria Romero, a cashier at the Chevron Food Mart just off Interstate 15 in Barstow, Calif., said she has seen an increase in travelers there, especially families and people from out of state.

“It’s wonderful. We need it,” she said. “The busier, the better.”

Some travelers weren’t thrilled about their mode of transportation. Anthony Lauro joined nearly 100 people lined up Thursday morning for a Montreal-bound coach at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s bus terminal in midtown Manhattan. He faced an eight-hour ride to see his fiancee there.

“Flying to Canada is astronomically overpriced,” he said.

Helping matters is that the most densely populated parts of the country got a break from the weather Dec. 23 with rain finally stopping in California and a few days away in the East.

But predictions of Friday’s storm concerned travelers in the Midwest.

Steve Brown, 50, of Elm Creek, Neb., left Tuesday afternoon and drove all night to beat the storm as it worked its way east. Brown, a grain hauler, was taking his two children to see his mother on the Ohio dairy farm where he grew up.

“I had orders to come home or she was going to come get me,” Brown said at the Elmore rest area, where adults filled up on coffee while kids, traveling in pajamas, loaded up on Tater Tots.

After record-breaking snow falls in the East and a treacherous Christmas travel season last year, the ways weather can mess up travel seem to be on plenty of minds.

At LaGuardia, Mike and Martha Lee Mellis waited to fly to Aspen, Colo., with their three young sons. They dreaded a repeat of last winter’s ski trip, when a snowstorm hit while they were transferring in Chicago on their way home.

“We had to return via Philadelphia, and I had to rent a car and drive everybody home at 11 at night,” Mike Mellis recalled.

His wife had been trying to forget, saying, “I’ve blocked it all out.”

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Karen Hawkins in Chicago; Warren Levinson and Verena Dobnik in New York City; Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, N.J.; David Goodman in Detroit; Eileen Sullivan and Samantha Bomkamp in Washington; Lucas L. Johnson II in Nashville, Tenn.; Michelle Price in Phoenix; Mark Pratt in Boston; and John Seewer in Elmore, Ohio.

McGinnis: A holiday request

I’d like to ask a small favor from those who think that the use of “Happy Holidays” is part of a plot to eliminate Christmas: Please, just relax.

First of all, “Happy Holidays” has been in use for years. Long before it had any connotations of being a relatively “religion-neutral” phrase, in my world the term was primarily used to refer to both Christmas and New Year’s. “Season’s Greetings” was used much the same way. So the argument can’t be against the phrase, but rather the context in which it’s being used, or rather, the phrase it is being used in place of.

Secondly, understand that “Happy Holidays” isn’t excluding your beliefs at all, nor minimizing them. The phrase is being used in an effort to acknowledge the validity and value of the holidays celebrated by many different belief structures, which Christianity is quite obviously one of. It’s not shutting you out, it’s letting other folks in. I haven’t heard anyone say “Happy Holidays, Unless You Celebrate Christmas” yet.

When a stranger says “Merry Christmas” to me, I smile and nod and thank them. I do not turn a cold shoulder and sneer at their wish. I know they mean no harm. I just think that if they took a little time and gave a little thought to what they were saying, they would realize that they are being just a little bit presumptuous and exclusionary. By assuming that I am Christian and therefore open to the greeting which they give, they are, in some small way, assuming that their beliefs are somehow more applicable to me than my beliefs are.

In the same vein, some people refuse to see the use of an innocuous phrase like “Happy Holidays” as anything but an outright affront to what they believe. By gum, you’d better say “Merry Christmas” or I’ll never shop at your store again! Okay, then what? If I don’t somehow acknowledge Easter when that rolls around, you’ll skip town, too? What about All Saints Day? That one doesn’t get much play nowadays. Shall we add that one to the canon? Taken to its logical extreme, these folks are basically insisting we tailor our speech to suit their beliefs alone.

We’re losing sight of a lot of things here. Let us not forget what this wondrous season is truly about: Money. Yep, the almighty dollar. A mass-marketed, corporately driven merry-go-round of homogenized cheer and wonderment designed to separate as many of us from as many of our little green pieces of paper as possible. No matter what the holidays used to mean in society, to anyone, that definition has long since gone the way of the dodo.

Outright cynicism aside, what allows me to relax and enjoy the season is the spirit in which it is intended by the individuals participating in it. For those of us who don’t have a financial stake in the holidays, the joy comes in giving ­— showing our love for others by doing something special, to let them know how much they mean by giving a present, baking a cookie, sending a card or just seeing them and giving them a hug.

As someone who gives a lot at this time of year, nothing does my heart gladder than to see someone I care about smile and say thank you, no matter what I did for them — and any season which gives me the chance to do that, and do it often, is a wonderful time, no matter what I do or don’t believe in.

That, truly, is the Reason for the Season: giving out of love and respect to those who have enriched our lives, and being enriched in return simply through the act of giving. Perhaps those who seem intent on finding fault in an innocently intended phrase should reflect for a second on the fact that, at some level, saying “Happy Holidays” is giving — giving worth and consideration to those who might not believe exactly what you do.

As a few great philosophers on the sadly long-lost TV show “Mystery Science Theater 3000” once opined: “If there’s one point we’d like to make with this festive holiday song, it’s that Christmas comes but once a year, so for a few days, for crying out loud,

‘Uh-oh, Here Comes Christmas’ at Lourdes College

The Lourdes College Drama Society presents its third annual production of “Uh-oh, Here Comes Christmas” Dec. 3 through Dec. 5.

“Uh-oh, Here Comes Christmas” takes a comedic look at the struggle to find the holiday spirit. The performance is a series of small sketches based on best-selling author Robert Fulgham’s (“All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.”) short stories.

“It’s funny and it’s kind of poignant,” said Keith Ramsdell, the drama society’s advisor. “I refer to a sense in the play that there are kind of ‘Linus’ moments. It’s not just the funny ha ha moments of Christmas, but what are some of the real reasons for Christmas.”

The shorter performance is family friendly and fits in with other holiday classics and traditions such as “Nutcracker,” Ramsdell said.

Performances are Dec. 3 and Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. and Dec. 5 at 2 p.m. at the Ebeid Student Center on the lower level of McAlear Hall. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the door.

Holiday tours at Wolcott House

“The kids in girl and boy land will have a jubilee, they’re going to build a toy land town all around the Christmas tree.” Staff at The Wolcott House in Maumee have done just that for the museum’s annual holiday guided tours, which started Nov. 18.

This year’s theme is “The Joys and Toys of Christmas Past,” with each room decorated to depict a Christmas of a different era, ranging from the mid-1800s to the 1930s, said curator Marilyn Wendler.

The theme was chosen to showcase some of the museum’s collection that isn’t always seen, said museum store manager Judy Walrod.

“We just started talking about it and we have so many toys that people don’t see,” Walrod said.

Many pieces were taken out of storage to display while others were taken from other parts of the museum and rearranged into Christmas scenes. Displays include children’s tea sets, teddy bears, trains, books, metal toys from the turn of the century and a dollhouse and dolls from around the world, some dating from the 1840s, Wendler said.

One room depicts the 1930s, during the Great Depression, a time period many people have compared to today, Wendler said.

“How did parents cope and manage to buy toys for their children? They had to make do and often hand-made the toys,” Wendler said. “We wanted to try to show what children played with and how they managed to make it during the Depression.”

The Maumee Garden Club decorated a room depicting a turn-of-the-century-era Christmas, including a collection of teddy bears, which became popular during that time because of President Teddy Roosevelt, Wendler said.

Another room, decorated with a Christmas scene from the early Victorian period of the 1850-1860s, features recently installed wallpaper hand-blocked from an original 1930s pattern.

Holiday tours last about an hour and will run Thursday through Sunday at 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. through Sunday, Dec. 19. Admission is $3.50 for adults, $3 for seniors and $1.50 for students. The museum, at 1035 River Road in Maumee.

Tours de Noel: Old West End celebrates the holiday season

Tour the historic homes of Toledo’s Old West End during the holiday event “Tours de Noel.”

Hosted by the Women of the Old West End, the tour features four houses decorated for the holiday season as well as the Mansion View Inn.

Tours de Noel, an annual event started in the mid-1980s, is the primary fundraiser for the Women of the Old West End, said Toni Moore, chairwoman for the event.

“We decided we wanted to do winter tours not only to showcase these incredible houses, but to also let people know Old West End is an incredible neighborhood to live in,” she said. “It is a neighborhood of neighbors. We all know each other down here and we work on many projects together.”

In addition to showcasing the neighborhood, the tour allows visitors to experience and appreciate the history of one of Toledo’s oldest neighborhoods, Moore said. Many of the houses were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

This year, Cheri Copeland and Mike Shull will open their 1895 home for its second winter tour. Copeland, who has lived with her husband in the Old West End for 15 years, said the neighborhood is a treasure.

“I think people don’t always understand or know about the Old West End and this is a great opportunity for us to share,” she said.

The couple’s house will showcase a fully decorated first floor as well as a “Star Wars”-themed Christmas tree in the basement.

Down the street, Dennis Lange’s home will also be on tour. Lange got involved with the tour again to show his commitment to the neighborhood, he said.

“I’m just one of those people who can’t say no,” Lange said.

Lange will have individuals leading tours throughout the first and second floor of his 1892 home. Groups will get to enter the rooms and really see them, he said.

Lange, who has a large collection of Santas, will have more than 300 on display. In addition, he has one yearround Christmas-themed room in his home.

While all the homes are within walking distance of each other, shuttle service is available, Moore said. Shuttles will run from the Park Lane Luxury Apartments, 142 23rd St., to each house.

Tours de Noel is from noon to 7 p.m. Dec. 5. Tickets for the tour are $15 a person or $10 for those 55 and older. Tickets can be purchased the day of the event or by calling (419) 244-4921.

In addition to the tour, a gift boutique featuring 12 different vendors will be setup within the Park Lane Apartments. Vendors will have many affordable gifts including jewelry, candles and homemade soaps, Moore said.

Also at Park Lane Apartments is the annual Arboretum Cookie Walk, benefiting the Old West End’s Agnes Reynolds Jackson Arboretum.

Each year more than 5,000 cookies are made and sold by Old West End residents to help cover the costs of the park.

For more information about Tours de Noel, visit www.womenoftheoldwestendinc.com. O